


Spin Around Now, Repeat the Cycle

by Sandalaris



Series: the white rabbit's pocketwatch [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crazy Belle (Once Upon a Time), F/M, alternate univers, incorrect dipiction of insanity, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 01:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12784281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandalaris/pseuds/Sandalaris
Summary: Rumple debates the best of course of action, and whether instant gratification is worth it in the long run. It's all moot anyway, somethings never change.AU Where Belle escaped the hospital just before Emma arrived.





	Spin Around Now, Repeat the Cycle

He's a selfish man, even with her. It was a hard thing, letting her go the first (and only) time. Easier because it had been about him as well, not wanting to be around the woman he loved when she couldn't love him in return. She came back though, foolishly brave girl. She _chose_ to stay, and he would have held her to it if she hadn't become a threat. 

She's not a threat here. He made sure of that. 

In all his faces, all his names, he values power. 

Make no mistake, he does love her. Truly loves her. Proven by curses both broken and nearly. There's no power greater in all the worlds. And one the Dark One believed out of his reach. Until she nearly destroyed him with a kiss. 

There's a vial in his store rooms, holding drops of black blood from his veins and the captured tears from one of her pillows. All wrapped up for him and glowing in a shade of deep lavender. 

It's powerful magic, and one of the few that anyone can enact if they can get their hands on a bottle. But it's so much more when it belongs to the caster. Let him waste Queen Snow's and her farmboy king's True Love on bringing magic to this world, his own will do far more. Is worth far more. 

Although perhaps, just this once, it's not worth more than the girl in his shop, free to move about now that the sign is set to closed and there's no one around to spot the little escapee hanging around the town's most hated pawnbroker. 

Belle calls him Dealmaker, when she says his name at all. Rarely Mr. Gold. It's takes an effort, he sees, to remember his false moniker. The other titles come easier, if still sparsely; Trickster, Collector, and one memorable time, a soft, absent-minded Master. But never Rumpelstiltskin. He tries not to miss it, tries to bide his time until the Savior completes her destiny and his caretaker's memories are returned. 

"Yes?" he replies, because she's calling to him. Softly under her breathe. He doesn't think she realizes she's doing it, is too focused on whatever she sees through the window of his shop, whispering "Dealmaker" to the glass. 

Belle turns to him, attention sharpening in an instant. She looks like so much like herself at that moment that his breath catches in his throat. He wants to touch, wants to assure himself that she's there. 

She smiles as his hand rests between her shoulder blades, soft and happy, and something in him relaxes that he hadn't realized was tense. 

"It's close," she says conspiratory. 

"Is it now?" 

She hums her affirmative. He has the briefest moment to wonder if she can feel the curse, the way the Hatter can. If it's affecting her on levels that are other than forcing her into the role assigned to her. 

"Did you want to go outside?" 

She hasn't been for any real lengths of time, going to and from his shop and the two times she's disappeared in the weeks since she's found him. Moments that leave him in a near panic as she insists she has a secret that must be kept. He doesn't like it, but fears he'll drive her away and she's so good at slipping past him when she wants. 

"No," she says softly, head dipping in sudden bit of timidity. He can just feel the malevolent force around her, a pressure in the air that dances lightly along his skin and pushes her back into her role. "Someone might see." 

"If they do," he says carefully, stepping closer to her, "I will handle it. You needn't worry, love." 

She hums in response, turning her head at an angle to study the outside world once more before she spins around and heads back into the shop, touching items absently as she goes, face flicking between absent-minded horror and wonder and back again all within the span of heartbeats. 

The Savior is going to end the Dark Curse. Is more than strong enough to break it, and yet he questions. He doesn't need it broken, not yet at least, but a crack, a single crack on a single person. It's a dangerous temptation, to use his most powerful bit of magic to fix a problem that will be corrected with time. The whole town will remember if he just has patience, what need does he have to bring back one, to make Belle remember him when the last time he saw her... 

It's the most terrifying question of all: _Will she still love him when she fully returns?_

The bottle stays hidden. And really, he tells himself, it's better to save that bit of weaponry for later. 

He's a coward to the end. 

\- 

"Supper?" he asks, because she's made an effort to cook every night. To pay for her room and board, he thinks, although she hasn't said as much. Unaware that there isn't a price he'd accept to let her leave. She belongs here, was snatched up and hidden from him the last time she'd left the safety of his home. When he drove her away he reminds himself. 

"I forgot," she replies, gaze dropping in embarrassment. 

"It's alright, sweetheart," he says. "We can order in." She doesn't like it when he cooks their dinner, becomes quiet and withdrawn, disappearing into herself. It's the only meal she reacts to that way and he can't work out why. And when he's entirely honest with himself, he's a bit frightened of the answer. 

He's trying to learn her moods, so similar to what they were before, but not quite the same. Hidden land-mines that he can't quite find the cause of. 

But she's here and he's so grateful that even her most destructive bits of lunacy leave him only feeling concerned. He knows he'll be frustrated later, insist she not do certain tasks. When she ruins a favorite shirt of his or perhaps breaks a precious item, he'll get angry and irritated and all those things people swear they won't when dealing with someone they love. The world won't stop even in the face of miracles and soon his own sphere will adjust to her return. 

It was the same with Bae. He swore when his son was born that he'd do everything he could to love and care for the tiny life in his hands, that he'd never be like his own father. A promise he kept, until the moment his cowardness took his son from him. But others he broke. Ones for never raising his voice to his child. There were times, not many but still some, when he'd scold the boy too harshly for what only deserved gentle correcting. 

Mr. Gold had been surprisingly good for soothing those old wounds. This new world had access to things he'd never did in the old, and the common knowledge that every parent makes mistakes was so well spread that even the childless pawnshop owner knew it. Nothing could ever completely remove the guilt for his past misdeeds, but there was something about knowing he wasn't alone in them that eased him. 

"You rather like Granny's hamburgers," he says, grabbing up the phone to make the call. Gold had a guy that will fetch such things for him. Of course he did, had him before he ever remembered why most of the inhabitants had real reasons to fear him, because even without her memories the old wolf hates him enough he doesn't trust her with his food. With Belle's food. "Or are you thinking something else?" 

Her head tilts, one limp curl brushing against her jaw before she shakes it, eyes squeezed shut. He knows better now than to take that for a "no." It's her way of organizing her thoughts, or perhaps settling herself and he gives her the time to think. 

"Will Ruby be there?" She looks at him, blue eyes wide and curious, before she glances away and begins mumbling to herself. "Sad and broken. Alike. Not a mirror though. Didn't know before. Know now." 

He hesitates only a moment, filing the question away for later. He wasn't aware Belle had met Red's alter ego. 

"It'll be a different delivery person, dearest." 

She nods, going pensive. "Supposed to meet her. Later. Promised." More mumbled words he's not supposed to hear, but does. 

He opens his mouth to promise her things that he has no intention of keeping. Not right now, not while he doesn't know what Ruby knows but she speaks over him. 

"Hamburgers are good." 

He starts to dial, gears turning over in his head. Plans unfolding as he adds in another piece. He needs to know what the waitress knows, and what she's planning on doing with that information. And then he'll need to make contingency plans based on the answers. 

If time has taught Rumplestiltskin anything it's that he's doomed to repeat his mistakes, and his loved ones are the ones that pay for it. If he was a better man he'd send her away, properly this time. 

Thank the gods he isn't.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I imagine that Rumple capitalizes the names Belle calls him while she keeps them lowercase, but I do. 
> 
> The views expressed in this fic are entirely Rumple's, btw. Not mine. But the man has a very dark view of himself even as it's starkly honest as well. And let's all be honest a moment, he wasn't a nice man when he first brought his indentured servant to his home. Only Belle didn't have the luxury of knowing she'd be done serving the master of the house after number of years and instead was signed on for life. Or rather... longer than that. He said "forever"... now I'm headcanoning that he was planning on keeping her from aging, using magic to keep her alive forever so as to follow the exact wording of the deal.


End file.
